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A red and gold top with jagged edges adorned with glitter and a skirt to match.
That was Giselle “The Wassi One” Blanche’s first masquerade outfit at age 14 during her first Miami Carnival in 1988.
Blanche looks back on her first carnival fondly, calling it exhilarating. “My mom and I made the costumes ourselves. We designed and made that and to this day, 36 years later, it’s still very much the same,” Blanche said of her carnival experience.
She will be among 100,000 people enjoying the festivities at the 40th anniversary of Miami Carnival, a three-day affair spanning Columbus Day weekend, celebrating Caribbean heritage and culture with pageantry, music, food and arts and crafts. The event is still scheduled to take place, though many thought it would be canceled because of concerns about Hurricane Milton.
“It should be more, quite frankly,” Miami Carnival marketing director John Beckford told the Miami Herald, half-jokingly, about the attendance. “Forty years later, I wish it was half a million.”
Beckford rattled off what can be expected at this year’s carnival like an auctioneer: More than 40 artists and local DJs, a dancehall zone, Caribbean cuisines and the list goes on. This year, 21 Mas bands will compete for $10,000, including Blanche, who started her own Mas band called Wassi Ones.
This year’s festivities began last weekend with the Miami Junior Carnival and continue with the main event, a three-day itinerary starting Friday with Panorama Steel Band Competition. On Saturday, patrons will be treated to Jouvert and on Sunday the Mas Band Parade and concerts featuring Trinidadian singer Patrice Roberts and Saint Vincent artist Lyrikal.
The Panorama Steel Band Competition is an ode to the steel drum, one of the first instruments created during the 20th century. Jouvert is a celebration of calypso and soca bands as people follow them in the streets dancing.
The Parade of Bands will feature more than 18,000 masqueraders and more than 20 mas bands dancing through a parade route followed by a judging of the bands. Each band also has a theme they portray with intricate costumes in vibrant colors.
Longtime Carnival collaborators and performers such as Trinidadian musician Machel Montano and radio personality Mike Andrews, who was one of the DJs for the first Miami Carnival, will be honored at Panorama. Montano will also be honored at the Parade of Bands and Concert.
Andrews recalls the impact Miami’s first Carnival had on Caribbeans who lived in northern states, where the month of October can be chilly. “We are still warm down here, and for the few visitors that came down to be able to be outside in short pants and T shirts and sandals and sneakers and enjoying the music of the Caribbean, and hanging out with friends and eating food – it was an experience that they enjoyed tremendously.”
These days, Miami Carnival boasts sponsors such as Monster Juice and Red Stripe along with help from The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau and Miami-Dade County.
But in its infancy, Beckford said founding members often had to come out of their own pockets to put on the carnival. “Back then they used their personal funds and got a second mortgage on their house,” he said.
The first Miami Carnival – then known as West Indian American Carnival of Miami – was at the corner of 183rd Street and Seventh Avenue in what is now Miami Gardens. Miami Carnival is viewed as the final stop of carnival season, which kicks of in February in the Caribbean and after carnivals in Toronto and Brooklyn, New York.
The founding members consisted of about a dozen people, including founding Miami Carnival board member and chair Ruthven Williams, who has held multiple roles within the organization throughout the years.
“It was a bit rough because at one point in time we had a bill to pay and didn’t have the money,” Williams recalled. “And in those days we’re being paid by checks.”
The festival has been held in many locales throughout the years: Miami Gardens, Miami, North Miami, Opa-locka and Hialeah. For several years in the early 2000s, the carnival split off into two separate organizations —one in Miami-Dade and another celebrated in Broward— before rejoining again in 2009, according to a Miami Herald article.
“Organizers competed for revelers,” the Herald reported. “Miami enjoyed the cachet, history, and name recognition. But Broward had the growing Caribbean community. The two sides also competed for sponsors and popular band leaders.”
“I think both sides realized if we keep doing this, people might get frustrated and turn away from even coming,” Williams said. What led the two side to reunited, the Herald reported, was the economic crisis that began in 2008.
The festival in part led to the growing Caribbean population in South Florida, said Marlon Hill, general counsel for Miami Carnival. “This was the early, early days of the development of the Caribbean community, and more specifically, those from Trinidad and Tobago who have had more of a long standing tradition with carnival culture,” he said. According to the U.S. Census, Broward and Miami-Dade counties have more than 342,000 Caribbean residents combined.
Hill, who is originally from Kingston, Jamaica, said he attended his first carnival in the early 1990s in Miami along Biscayne Boulevard. “It was great to have the carnival out in the open street,” he said. “It is a common Caribbean carnival experience, because whenever you have a carnival in the Caribbean, the entire country is celebrating the carnival. It’s not a specific city or a specific county. The entire country is involved.”
Hill emphasized the music, the artistry of masquerade and the costumes, and the steel drum are all essential to the carnival. But he noted that the richness of carnival is its history: “Carnival was born out of a historical context around resistance to oppression to express ourselves as black people,” Hill said.
“Many people forget that historical context,” he said, “and they get distracted by the euphoria of being at the carnival fete or the pageantry.”
Beckford, too, emphasized it’s not just “beads and feathers” when it comes to carnival and said its a celebration of Caribbean culture, raving on about Sunday’s festivities.
“There just so much to do: You have your dance hall zone. You’ve got the mas band stage where the bands are crossing. You’ve got the concert stage, you’ve got the food court, you’ve got the arts and crafts pavilion. You have the corporate pavilion where folks are giving out free stuff,” he said. “I mean it’s just 12 hours of entertainment.”
If you go:What: Miami Carnival
When: Oct. 11-13
Where: Central Broward Park, 700 NW 11th Pl, Lauderhill (Panorma, Friday and Jouvert, Saturday); Miami-Dade County Fair Expo, 10901 SW 24th St, Miami (Carnival, Sunday)
Cost: Panorama, $30, Jouvert, $65, Carnival Day, $50
Info: https://miamicarnival.org/10jili